The New Wave of Platform Games

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PSXPower's post-E3 coverage continues with a look at the next wave of PSX platform titles

By IGN Staff

Platform titles have always been my bag. From the first time I placed my young, sweaty hands on Donkey Kong, I was hooked. Tomb Raider has taken the genre pretty far away from Miyamoto's humble ideas, but the basics are still there. You still jump around on platforms, you still have to avoid obstacles, and, as Mario still does today, you still get to jump on things with your bottom (to coin Dave Perry, president of Shiny).

E3 had a clutch of new platform titles, and with a few exceptions, the majority of them are taking the notion of true 3D quite seriously.

Of the half-dozen or so platform titles, two stood out, mainly for their gorgeous graphics. Both Croc, from Fox Interactive, and Gex: Enter the Gecko, from Crystal Dynamics, are just a pleasure to look at. Enter the Gecko takes the genre a little farther than Croc, which is content to occupy the space that Mario 64 opened up. In fact, the game looks so much like that of the plumber, it'd be hard to tell them apart without the cute, little crocodile.

Crystal Dynamic's other new platformer is Pandemonium 2, and like Sony's offering, Crash Bandicoot 2, is constrained to rails. Pandemonium 2 looks almost exactly like the first, save for a new color palette and a little character redesign, but like they say, "If it ain't broke don't fix it." The same is true of Crash 2. Fans of the first will have no trouble getting into the second.

Two new-comers to the PSX arena, Sirtech and Behaviour Interactive, also have 3D platform titles looming on the horizon. Sirtech's Joe Blow, besides having a vaguely offensive name, does have some nice animation, although the game is still too far off to tell for sure how it will play. Behaviour's Jersey Devil, however, was playable, and benefits greatly from being analog compatible.

Although it may seem to some like an outdated genre, developers keep coming up with ways to further advance the platform field. It should be an interesting year.